ABSTRACT
In this paper we discuss the relation between socio-cultural changes pertaining to the postmodern condition and the conception of continuing education. The corpus of analysis is the book Learning to be, edited by Faure et al. (1972) as a result from the report of the International Commission on the Development of Education held by Edgar Faure and established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Starting from the notion of ‘learning to be’, we shape and problematize historical conditions that made the emergence of continuing education and its formulation as a contemporary imperative possible. Our goal is to question the web of power-knowledge that has formed, maintained and disseminated policies of continuing education and its relations with ‘learning to be’. We have sought to show that these policies stimulate subjects to reshape themselves constantly in the face of the continual diversification of socio-cultural, political and economic demands. We argue that continuing education appears as a response to inconstancies of contemporary life, as a way of monitoring and managing its effects. We also highlight that this game of constancies-inconstancies opens spaces of managing and inventing at the same time.
Keywords:
Education; Continuing education; Educational policy; Biopolitics and education.